Terrorists, beware! The European Union-funded "CleanIT" project has just wrapped up its work, aimed at preventing online terrorist propaganda and recruitment within Europe.

In the run-up to the final CleanIT conference in Brussels on Wednesday, the group published its final report, (PDF) a 30-page document outlining its final recommendations. This document and the conference are the culmination of a two-year, €326,000 ($440,000) study grant from the EU's Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme (PDF). (Ars editor Cyrus Farivar will be moderating this conference, and his travel and lodging have been paid for out of CleanIT's budget.)

The final report has shed some of its earlier outrageous ideas—such as OS and browser-level monitoring as a condition of selling software products in the EU.

Nevertheless, CleanIT now advocates for increased cooperation between EU member states and argues that governments “should take an active role in reducing terrorist use of the Internet.” In addition, Internet companies should “state clearly in their terms and conditions that they will not tolerate terrorist use of the Internet on their platforms, and how they define terrorism.”

To do this, governments and Web companies will rely in part on users, thanks to a proposed “browser-based reporting mechanism [that] could be developed to allow end users to report terrorist use of the Internet.” Translation: a big "flag this site for terrorist activity" button in your favorite Web browser.

And assuming everyone can agree on precisely what is and isn’t a "terrorist website," what’s to stop such a site from simply moving outside of the 27-nation bloc? Not much, unless the EU wants ISPs to blacklist such sites.

Within the EU, these ideas aren't quite as strange as they might seem in the US. For instance, a French judge ruled that Twitter must identify anti-Semitic users—and must create a flagging system for users to note such posts. Less than a year ago, then-president Nicolas Sarkozy proposed a law that would make even viewing a hate website a crime.

But even CleanIT's backers know their ideas face an uphill battle, in part because of the sheer difficulty of defining "promotion of terrorism" and in part because of the nature of the Internet. Consider these caveats, from the final CleanIT document:

From a legal perspective, it is a challenge to reduce the terrorist use of the Internet because: The Internet is not a single virtual society governed by one system of rule of law.
• It is often difficult to determine which content on the Internet is illegal, also because illegality depends on the context in which it is presented and can differ worldwide and even between EU Member States.
• EU and Member States legislation and jurisdiction covers only a part of the Internet.
• Illegal content itself does not always lead to radicalization and terrorist acts, while content that does contribute to radicalization is not always illegal.
• Many activities of (potential) terrorists start in ordinary, easy accessible parts of the Internet and are not illegal.

The document also warns:

Any action taken to reduce the terrorist use of the Internet, whether by governments or by private entities, must comply with national provisions, EU, and other international legal instruments, and respect fundamental rights and civil liberties, including access to the Internet, freedoms of expression and assembly, the right to privacy, and data protection.

Those fundamental rights are outlined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Article 11 states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”

Doubters

As CleanIT has progressed, many critics from within Europe have emerged.

Arthur van der Wees, a Dutch IT lawyer, told Ars that CleanIT doesn’t “have a clue how to battle [terrorism],” adding that he does not see any “clear solutions or preventive policies” in CleanIT's final document.

“As you and I have discussed before, this is not that surprising, as legislation including fundamental (human) rights, should not be compromised by documents like these,” he added. “As you can read in this final version, this is re-confirmed several times, so this leaves this document—in this phase—as nothing more than a status report without strong countermeasures against terrorism.”

One of Europe’s leading Internet rights advocacy groups, European Digital Rights (EDRI) based in Brussels, has been a constant thorn in the side of CleanIT. The group published draft documents from the group back in September much to CleanIT’s chagrin, and EDRI isn't much happier with the final product.

“The final report is an incoherent mix of three elements—the effective lobbying done by the filtering companies that took part, the support for privatized policing that was the motivation behind the project being funded, and the profound incompetence of the project team,” Joe McNamee, of European Digital Rights, told Ars.

He was even more blunt, measuring its total grant money divided by the final document’s word count.

“At €44 ($59) per word, it is difficult to imagine a more expensive, less useful document,” he quipped.

Peer review

Earlier this month, Europe Digital Rights even published leaked versions the EU’s own internal evaluations (PDF) for CleanIT. Those anonymous evaluations by three unnamed officials show that CleanIT just squeaked by to get its approval, with two out of three evaluators having serious doubts.

One unnamed evaluator said as much, noting:

“The proposal does not clearly explain how the objective is to be reached…Therefore I have substantial doubts if it is possible to achieve the desired objective this way.”

“The only indicators are the general principles and the guideline for implementation which are not verifiable.”

“I have serious doubts if the applicant will be able to deliver the results due to lack of methodology.”

Another wrote: “If the propose result of establishing general principles to address terrorist or other illegal use of the Internet can be achieved between private sector and law enforcement this would have to be regarded as a major breakthrough. With regard to the methodological weakness of the proposal it remains however questionable whether these results can really be achieved.”

At the end of the day, the final document’s own words—suggesting this may be a solution in search of a problem—may be its most damning. It concludes, “Terrorist use of the Internet is currently not widely known or understood.”

This is wrong on so many levels. First of all, on the "turn against your neighbor" level. Second of all on the way this will be misused. Imagine the likes of 4chan using this tool. Great...

I'll withhold judgement with regard to my differences of opinion about free speech vs. Europe's general ideas about free speech, but if you ask me, then yes, that would be a third level this is wrong on.

On one hand, initiatives like this one make me upset about the infringement of free specch. I know that not every country has laws protecting speech to the extent that mine does (live in the US), but free expression seems to create a better result than suppression.

On the other hand, I really wish we had something like this that could be utilized against the Westboro Baptist Church.

On second thought, why aren't we actively facilitating "terrorist use of the internet"?

Hear me out on this one. History has shown over and over again that fundamentalist organisations eventually turn in on themselves. Now, imagine the damage done to terror groups when you give zealots a forum to express their own idiosyncratic world views?They'll be like coke-heads engaged in conversation (read: shouting at each-others faces) every one of them convinced they are talking with the words of God, all slightly disagreeing with one another. Completely lacking the ability of self-criticizing the religious zeal behind their own ideas, they'll quickly stop caring about real world issues and focus all their efforts and intention on setting the record straight with xXx_JiHaDiSt_420_xXx.

If we give terrorists the internet, aspiring democracies can just sit back, grab some pop-corn and watch terrorism wipe itself out like some kids engaged in a flamewar on a youtube comment section. People of the free world, we need to stop combating terrorism on the internet, every Jihadist trolled into making a 500 word reply on why Justing Bieber is the spawn of western decadence, is a victory.

Are the saying they want to put indentification of terrorists into hands to random users on internet?

That seems to be the idea. I really love the inconsistency that will be brought about by this, though:

Quote:

Internet companies should “state clearly in their terms and conditions that they will not tolerate terrorist use of the Internet on their platforms, and how they define terrorism.”

To do this, governments and Web companies will rely in part on users, thanks to a proposed “browser-based reporting mechanism [that] could be developed to allow end users to report terrorist use of the Internet.”

So, rather than publish a single standard defining what constitutes "terrorism" (if such a single standard could be written), they are suggesting instead that each ISP should develop their own? Does that mean that (hypothetically) a website might be terrorist if I'm on ISP A, but if I switch to ISP B now the site is OK?

In either case, though, they seem to be relying on users to identify the sites. How could that possibly work? Let's forget about the different definitions on different ISPs for a moment, that's really not important anyway....how am I to flag sites in a manner consistent with my neighbor?

And, if the user has to flag the sites, you have to ask.....how did they get there? I've never unintentionally gotten to a website that I would consider terrorist....if I'm there intentionally, it's either because I want the information on the site (not going to flag this site, if I'm utilizing it for something), or it's because I've got an agenda (and I'm using the new anti-terrorism tools to suppress someone else's speech).

Such a feature would never be used to suppress dissent or unpopular opinions.

Never.

But Apple/Samsung/CompanyX/PatentTrollY might be able to use this tool in their valiant fight against patent infringement, which is probably economic terrorism anyway by some definition (not mine BTW).

My first thought on reading the title was that people would use it to flag sites they don't like as being terrorist sites. My second thought was that, if sites are immediately blocked after being flagged (or receiving a certain number of flags) then actual terrorists could go around shutting down websites that oppose them by sending in all those false positives...

Then comes the problem of getting the website turned back on after being falsely identified as a terrorist website. Will they have one of those 'scare pages' replace it, making all the site's visitors during the time the site's down afraid of being labeled a terrorist for visiting that website? 'Cause that would be pretty harmful to business sites. And what kind of hoops (governmental vs. ISP) would they have to jump through to prove their innocence? (More importantly, could they sue? It'd make a great defamation of character case, I'd bet. 'Cause that would make this popcorn-worthy bad idea into a circus-level event.)

Truly, this sounds like it has the potential to be way worse than the problems with DMCA (and the six strikes BS our ISPs are going to implement). Hopefully nothing will actually come of this and it will be relegated to the scrapheap of forgotten bad ideas.

On one hand, initiatives like this one make me upset about the infringement of free specch. I know that not every country has laws protecting speech to the extent that mine does (live in the US), but free expression seems to create a better result than suppression.

On the other hand, I really wish we had something like this that could be utilized against the Westboro Baptist Church.

The WBC has some crazy ideas, and it would be nice if they came to their senses, but I don't think there's an objective standard I'd be comfortable with the government wielding against them. Being peacefully disrespectful is not a crime, and shouldn't be.

The Internet is not a single virtual society governed by one system of rule of law.

I hate it when people throw around the term "rule of law". It's not about laws per se, or whether individuals respect them, it's about the procedures under which laws are made and administered. While it is a notoriously slippery concept, I get the feeling from quote that they just threw it in to jazz things up, when they really just mean "system of law".

I get the vibe of the whole thing that the final report is probably of lesser quality than a typical third or fourth year university term paper. For almost half a million dollars.

So what's to stop someone from going to a nice, innocent site like <http://www.france.fr/en> and pressing the "This is a Terrorist site" button? Use Onion/Tor as the browser (once they figure out the hack to get the button working on it) for anonymity. Dissent, indeed.

Anon would have a field day with a script to press the button a zillion times on sites they don't like. A DOS (Denial Of Stupidity) attack. So would any terrorist org and any government with a chip on its shoulder.

This is so scary as we watch freedom of speech protections being slowly chipped away

Looks like Canada and New Zealand are the beacons of hope now......

If they are saying they are giving random users ability to tag something as terrorist website without global standard, I see this as just totally daft idea some desperate politicians thought up to salvage their career rather than purposeful attack on freedom of speech.

Another reason to host in the land of the free and brave. United States of America. So what is a terrorist website exactly? Ahhh, let me guess, anything a particular government considers not to comply with their democratic rules?

Let me guess, a communist website, a nazi website, satanic churches, Scientology, or some of this US websites which are antisemitic, or talk about Jew conspiracy, all of them are terrorist websites right? Let include in that list, any website which is religious of some type of content but talks against a specific government.

Just like Germany blocks Youtube videos of Hitler speeches, videos which are even allowed in Israel for historical research in universities, all history videos like that are considered extremist content in Europe. Its part of our human history, if you don´t like it, kill yourself because we live in planet earth and you cannot decide which parts of history to erase and which to glorify. Its hour history, bad, evil, good, great, bloody, lovely, etc.

So, if I they don´t like your color, your tone of voice or your political point of view, you are a terrorist. Even when some of this websites do not promote a single violent thing. Nice !!!!

So who exactly defines a terrorist? Can I decide if they are terrorist as well? Hate creates more hate, and what you think this websites people are going to do when they are treated with violent acts? They are going to be justified to act violent against this same group of people that are attacking them.

I don´t like some of this websites anymore more than you do, but let me guess, they are afraid of people speaking their mind. Look at some of this websites, stormfront, they are huge !!! This is what they are afraid. They are afraid that people can actually look up on the Internet and decide what they want to think. Not what they are imposed to think.

I don´t care if if they love Hitler, or they if the consider Satan their good. They are entitled to free speech. And if they have traffic, its because there are people that agree with them. They should fight them with open public debate, not by trying to take them down just because they consider them dangerous. Since when are ideas dangerous. Ahhh yes, they are.

Ideas are dangerous, in particular if some of them could be actually correct. Yes, that is right, some of this lunatics are right on some stuff, and this is why they want to ban them.

Is this the start of the end of the Internet? Today its terrorist websites, tomorrow its going to be anything they don´t like or tolerate. What is next? Burning books on streets like Nazis did? Ahh wait, they are just like Nazis, they want to burn this websites, but don´t want to be fingerpointed, so they want to hide under the fact "other" anonymous Internet users should do it for them...

This are the real dangerous people on this planet. Any human being that is so intolerant to deny other people their freedom to think what they want and speak it out, even if they want to have sex with a three, let those lunatics live. Its their mind, its their speech, its their voice. If they are not promoting anything dangerous I see no harm. Nobody is forcing you to go to this websites. Of what exactly are this governments so afraid? Probably that anyone can search in Google and probably find something they have banned for decades. This is what the true internet is all about. No more lying, no more information ban, where anyone can research anything they want.

This are the real terrorist.

Inception movie quote:What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere.

I guess this quote is absolutely true. Because websites are nothing more than that. Ideas, this are intangible things that cannot do anything for themselves, just let people with same interest getting together. And this is what they are afraid, people spreading their ideas? If some of this ideas are so bad, they will not spread. Simple. If they do spread, then we need to analyze why.

We need some context, Ars. Who are these people, and why are governments funding them instead of staging an intervention?

I also want to know the same. Ars should research what kind of idiots funded this even more idiots, and probably with public taxes money. This sounds like the most stupid and dangerous idea ever. Who are the great minds behind this?

They should be exposed, instead of trying to hide behind some browser tool for others to do their dirty work. Also, this is a Wordpress website with a free theme. 400 K for that? Someone was scammed. No wonder Europe is going to hell, they should pay this from their own pockets, not with tax money that comes from the public. This seems more like a ripoff as I cannot imagine someone coming with such an idea.

Like OMG, Kyle dissed that game I was so looking forward to playing.... Mark as terrorist.Casey didn't think HTC's new phone for your phone was as great an idea as I did... Mark as terrorist.John wasn't as thrilled about the new OSX features that I was... Mark as terrorist.ArsCommenterX said that Windows sux and called it WINDOZE... Mark as terrorist.

Yeah, can't see anything going wrong with this plan...

(If there really is an ArsCommenterX, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to pick on you, honest. Same to you Kyle, Casey, and John. I like your reviews, honest.{I don't even own a Mac and I read Johns reviews. They give me a wish list for windows. And before you all tell me to just switch, I think they're too expensive for the hardware and I don't care for Apples policy of breaking my software every few years. And until recently it was a game wasteland.})

Like OMG, Kyle dissed that game I was so looking forward to playing.... Mark as terrorist.Casey didn't think HTC's new phone for your phone was as great an idea as I did... Mark as terrorist.John wasn't as thrilled about the new OSX features that I was... Mark as terrorist.ArsCommenterX said that Windows sux and called it WINDOZE... Mark as terrorist.

Yeah, can't see anything going wrong with this plan...

(If there really is an ArsCommenterX, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to pick on you, honest. Same to you Kyle, Casey, and John. I like your reviews, honest.{I don't even own a Mac and I read Johns reviews. They give me a wish list for windows. And before you all tell me to just switch, I think they're too expensive for the hardware and I don't care for Apples policy of breaking my software every few years. And until recently it was a game wasteland.})

You are a terrorist for posting this! Ars is also full of terrorists, jut read the comments in most articles.